A prayer to the God of all children

When I hold my first grandchild, my heart swells with love and renewed determination to pass on a world safer and more fit for her and every child.
When I hold my first grandchild, my heart swells with love and renewed determination to pass on a world safer and more fit for her and every child. My heart swells with fear at the unthinkable possibility of a Pandora’s box of uncontrollable nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare opening up and spilling out to contaminate all the earth and leaving no child behind. We must speak and act with urgency so that our national and world leaders will exercise common and moral sense and step back from the brink of human catastrophe from war in a nuclear checkmated world. I hope they and all of us will remember that we are stewards of the children and grandchildren God has entrusted to our care. So I share a prayer to the God of all children for whom we are all responsible in our speck of time.

O GOD OF ALL CHILDREN

O God of the children of Atlanta, Albania, and Amman,Of Afghanistan and Pakistan, India, Israel, Iraq. and Iran,Of Jerusalem and Jericho, Chechnya, Russia, and Colombia,Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of Black and Brown and White Albino children and those all mixed together,Of children who are rich and poor and in between,Of children who speak English and Russian and Hmong and Spanish and Korean and languages our ears cannot discern, Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of the child prodigy and child prostitute, of the child of rapture and the child of rape.Of run or thrown away children who struggle every day without parent or place or friend or future, Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of children who can walk and talk and hear and see and sing and dance and jump and play and of children who wish they could but can’t Of children who are loved and unloved, wanted and unwanted,Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of beggar, beaten, abused, neglected, homeless, AIDS, drug, violence, and hunger-ravaged children,Of children who are emotionally and physically and mentally fragile, and of children who rebel and ridicule, torment and taunt,Help us to love and respect and protect them all.

O God of children of destiny and of despair, of war and of peace,Of disfigured, diseased, and dying children, Of children without hope and of children with hope to spare and to share,Help me to love and respect and protect them all.